His unconscious glance made him know already without knowledge it was from Cornelia. He sat, holding the letter out as his hands had received it: unopened.... “What does she want?” beat sluggish in his head like an alarum chiming through thick fog. He opened it: he put on his hat: he was gone. This sense he had very sharp: that he was gone. He should, he felt, have stayed, stayed in their room until David returned. But Cornelia wanted him. Coming to her, he had this detached sense: that he was gone.... She gave him both her hands. He felt her face, its sweetness, its dear sweet homeliness. He saw that she was glad he had come, and that she had missed him: how she would always forgive him, and how cruelly for near two years he had been treating her. She placed a letter in his hand. He faced it. He went to the couch suddenly and sat down.... The pall lifted that was over his great hurt, he knew how he was suffering. The world had been clear--their room--and he in cloud: it had been like a shrill close lake under a hidden sky. Now all else was dim save the burning sun of his hurt. The letter was from their sister, Ruth: it told of the death of their father. Tom hid his face, he buried also his hard hands in the cushions. That he might clench his fists and his teeth, unseen. Cornelia placed her hand on his shoulder. She was torn by his weeping. He righted himself. His eyes were burned with tears. Cornelia sat beside him. She took his hand. She placed his hand to her lips. “Dear Tom!” She was trying to smile. Instead of the smile, came tears to her also. She turned away her face, struggling, not understanding. “I am not weeping for father,” said Tom. “I am weeping for ourselves.... So are you!” Cornelia gave way. She also hid her face in order to give way. Tom, stroking her hand, looked beyond them: from the sun of his hurt into the dim world. XIII Cornelia loved to sit by her open window and look out. She had the need of seeing the City clear: a cold pattern. Her own mind was chaos and she saw no help to crystallize the swirling problems that consumed her. Like one who in great heat wins comfort from vision of cool waters, she thought of the City as a design, carefully plotted out. It was not easy. Looking beyond her house, with the street swarming in her eyes and the battlemented roofs surging above her head, she was dim in revery. In the dimness, the City lost its geometric outlines. It veered in and out of her grasp like a delirious dream: its streets were parabolas, freighted with teeming particles of life which each had a centrifugal direction. It all was a frangent swarm, knotted, heaving upon itself, forever ashift. She saw it a monstrous replica of her own mind: there was no relief.